FCC prods cable companies in tiff with indie programmers

The FCC has issued new rules governing how cable companies handle disputes …

How bad has it gotten between the cable industry and independent TV programmers? On Friday the Federal Communications Commission ordered all cable companies to post on their Web sites the name, telephone number, and e-mail address of their indie programmer liaison—that's how bad.

In November of last year, by a vote of three to two, the FCC adopted new rules for resolving conflicts between the cable giants and indies—unaffiliated programmers who run shows with which the cable company has no financial ties. The Commission released the details of the Order on Friday, which (hopefully) will make it easier for programmers to lease cable channels and arbitrate disputes with the cable giants. The latest rules—some of them embarrassingly obvious—require faster, more detailed cable company responses to unaffiliated programmer inquiries. They also mandate cheaper leasing rates.

None of this should be necessary, at least not in theory. The 1984 Cable Act required multivideo programming distributors [MPVDs] to set aside a percentage of their systems for commercial leasing, depending on the number of channels the service offers. The 1992 Cable Act updated the bill, empowering the FCC to set maximum leasing rates and make sure that the cable giants treat their independents decently—return their phone calls, no lying about stuff—that sort of thing.

But these days even relations between cable companies and independent sports programmers—the aristocracy of unaffiliated producers—are often tense. When the Senate grilled now FCC Commissioner Robert M. McDowell during his confirmation hearing in July of 2006, nobody asked him about the FCC's proposed AT&T/Bellsouth merger or its media ownership rules docket. Instead, Senator Gordon Smith of Oregon complained about Cablevision dropping the Yankees. Then they all broke for lunch.

Once McDowell got the appointment, his first job was heading off the near riot along the Atlantic coast that Time-Warner Cable almost started after purchasing a big chunk of bankrupted Adelphia Communications.

Time-Warner demanded new terms for the independent National Football League Network, which complains that the cable firms give their own affiliated sports shows more prominence on the channel lineup. When talks stalled, the MPVD just up and cancelled the broadcast of NFL Network preseason games. A gazillion hysterical phone calls from enraged football fanatics later, the FCC ordered the show back on the air.

The big independent sports channels, which usually get paid by cable companies to run their programs, have it easy compared to smaller unaffiliated outfits like Spanish speaking CaribeVision or Positive Media, which just want to lease air time. They and hundreds of other petitioners have asked for stricter rules, a fairer dispute resolution mechanism, and firmer arbitration deadlines, given that some conflicts between programmers and the cable companies take years to work out.

Here's what they got from the FCC on Friday. Frankly, the fact that the Commission had to order some of this says it all about how far the situation has gotten out of hand:

As already mentioned, cable companies must now post on their Web site the name, telephone number, and e-mail address of the "designated person to respond to requests for information about leased access channels."

An MPVD must, within three days, answer all programmer requests for information with 11 pieces of basic data, among them the process for requesting a channel, the price for channel access, whether the channel is free, and eight other painfully obvious and necessary details.

When a cable company responds to an FCC follow-up to a programmer complaint, the cable firm must include all documents to which it refers in its statement [duh].

The Commission has set the maximum rate for leasing a channel at 10¢ per subscriber to the tier in which the channel is bundled, a reform that one Commissioner said he hoped will "lower the rates and make them more affordable."

The FCC's Media Bureau must resolve a programmer complaint within 90 days after the pleading cycle for resolution, which the FCC kept at 90 days. This creates an effective deadline of 180 days to fix the problem.

When it comes to media ownership and related issues, FCC Chair Kevin Martin usually finds himself at odds with the agency's two Democrats: Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps. But in this case they rallied to his side. In their public statements, Republicans Robert McDowell and Deborah Taylor Tate say they did not vote for the reform package because they felt that the Commission had not given the new leasing rate enough thought.

Adelstein conceded that the formula had been put together rather hastily, but supported it anyway because the agency will delay the ruling for 90 days, giving critics a chance to appeal.

Don't worry, these new rules won't apply to those moronic half-hour advertisements for kits that explain how you can make big bucks selling people information about how they can make big bucks selling people information. Infomercial programmers are excluded from Friday's Order.

Further reading:

Matthew Lasar
Matt writes for Ars Technica about media/technology history, intellectual property, the FCC, or the Internet in general. He teaches United States history and politics at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Emailmatthew.lasar@arstechnica.com//Twitter@matthewlasar